Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Day 7. The Boogaloo.

According to wise and omniscient online portals, ‘The Boogaloo’ or when fully amped, ‘The Electric Boogaloo,’ was a kind of bizarre human mating ritual, swung by teenage Cubans and tall-talkin' New Yorkers, enacted and originated between the colourful décor of gay Brooklyn dance-floors during the 1960s. Among the many names and guises The Boogaloo still continues to hide under (including Electrified Eel Belt-Banger and Persian Pack-Rape) it is also, as I realised today, the title scribbled on the front of a scrunched and crumpled napkin, discovered in luck before laundry, lining the grizzly depths of my unwashed brown blazer. Sentenced to the boondocks of my dresser drawer due to elaborate cloud formations of whiskey, ash and unknowables donning its lapel, the said threads had been nary touched for a month. Not since it last coathangered itself upon my shoulders, to join the invisible posse to where my cousin falsely advertised as “the best club in Lithuania,” on my first ambitious night in the country.Today, peeling open the corners of the crusty kerchief, amazement hit me as I found a letter within, written to myself; one of those rare bursts of calculated memory, placed in secret to later piece together the panorama of this whole eclectic escapade- from the date of its origins, just over one month ago.So here ahead, weathered reader, lies the pocket entrails detailing a split second interlude between bad dancing and beer crimes, on a muddy night amid the pleasant concrete playground of the country’s second biggest city. Somehow I squeezed in uninvited by the side of my stork statured cousin, blonde and basketbally, and her two dazed and dazzling comrades. As the three storklets shook their Baltic booties to the beat of bad club favourites from 1997, ‘The Boogaloo’ was born, as this little piggy leant dribbling and visually vomiting over the bar. So here now...

THE BOOGALOO: FIRST NIGHT IN LITHUANIA

"After the bumpiest flight since Apollo 13, I have awakened in new surroundings. Statues of dead poets. High crime rates. The birthplace of my grandmother! The wind howls Mary outside this Euro tra-chic nightclub here in Kaunas while I, dressed inadequately in soiled Bulgarian dinner jacket and hat made from STRANGE HAIR, hunch over the bar leering (unintentionally) at the bar wenches dressed down in pantless commie soldier duds. Wait, unintentionally? This is 2011! I leer out of pure wayward curiousity.How has time passed since the fall of the soviet empire? Society is now free from the shackles of pants!Long live the Stalinist slurries. No counter-revolutionary offence meant.Anyway, back to my lovely grandmother. (indesiphable mush, then-)I left, waving in the Frankfurt dawn as the bus exhaust spat fumes into the ripping cavern between us. Oh why say “Goodbye?” In Hungarian, “Hello” means goodbye.If I was Hungarian, and could forever say hello, life would be a continual embracing reunion, rather than the ever-approaching fearful tearful farewells. …It was imminent, but now over, sweet eyes dripping salt of togetherness out on to the asphalt as we set apart…(Again, intangible jibber, slowly descending into weepy garbage, then the last line read…)THE SOVIET BARMAID IS WATCHING… KGB??”

For anybody concerned at how this night ended, you don’t need my input to regale you. It can be replayed at your own pace, in your own home. Just follow these simple directions; Self-digest a cauldron of whatever cleaning products line the shelves underneath your sink, blabber at the top of your voice to your cat (as he/she will understand you potentially better than Kaunas natives to a wasted Australian) and indulge in perverse hijinks, such as karate kicking your coffee table, whistling at your window panes, and washing your shoes with whatever falls out of your intestines.Also, for added re-enactment realism, do the falling down dance to Tutti Frutti and try to digest the pillows of your couch. In the final step toward replicating perfection, attempt to order a pizza, fail, then pass out only to wake and realise you were lying in a puddle of potato. Lastly, wash, rinse, shave, and forget anything ever existed. One month later, open your pocket, and search through the garbage to the goldmine. Bingo. You've done it. Welcome to ‘The Boogaloo’ my friend. Black spots revisited.